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The news out of Ford is grim these days. Several of my local Detroit pals who work there are taking buyouts, and those too young to be offered a parachute are jealous of the ones who are jumping. We’re all holding our breath to see whether Mr. Mulally and company have what it takes to pull out of this ominous-looking nosedive. It certainly won’t be easy, given the low morale and frightening brain-drain the company is experiencing. But this page isn’t about gloom and doom; it’s about hope for better driving through technology. So I rooted around and found some good news on the techie front coming out of our embattled number-two automaker.

Mark Wherrett and his team inside Ford’s Environmental Quality Office have worked out some ingenious alternatives to the otherwise costly and energy-intensive problem of cleaning up the nasty chemical stew coming out of today’s automotive paint shops. Today, fumes are routed through a series of carbon filters and then incinerated in a 1400-degree natural-gas furnace. The system meets EPA standards, but oxides of nitrogen and sulfur are emitted in rather disconcerting quantities, along with gobs of carbon-dioxide. Wherrett and his team noticed that the amount of natural gas required to keep the furnace operating dipped during peak painting hours, suggesting the volatile organic compounds they were scrubbing had at least some heating value as a fuel.

Indeed much of what stinks in paint is alcohol and alkane hydrocarbon gasses (methane and its chemical kissing-cousins). But while they’re dense enough to smell bad and cause health problems, they’re way too diffuse to power an engine or furnace by themselves. So the Ford EQO folks tapped a system in use by the semiconductor and Teflon manufacturing industries, called a fluidized bed concentrator. Fumes are blown up through a bin of carbon spheres that capture the organic gunk. Then the spheres are heated, releasing the compounds, at between 1000 and 10,000 times their original concentration.

From there the odorous stuff can be used as a fuel supplement in some other natural-gas-burning equipment, or it can power an external-combustion sterling engine, as is being tested at Ford’s Wayne Assembly plant, generating 55 kilowatts of electricity. It can be condensed and burned in an internal-combustion engine, as is implemented at the Oakville, Ontario, plant to generate 125 kilowatts. Or this rich hydrocarbon stream can be routed through a steam reformer that cracks it into hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide, and a bit of carbon monoxide so it can generate electricity more directly and efficiently in a solid-oxide fuel cell. This type of fuel cell is different from the ones powering cars. It’s larger and runs at much higher temperature, but it’s tolerant of dirtier hydrogen and it’s similarly efficient.

With funding assistance from the Canadian government, a fuel-cell sized to cope with the emissions of Oakville’s enamel base and clearcoat operations will be installed over the next three years. When it’s up and running, it’ll provide 250 kilowatts of clean electricity. That’s not huge power, but it’s better than free. It’s saving loads of natural gas and thereby eliminating tons of CO2 emissions that would otherwise be (ironically) expended in the name of environmental protection, plus it virtually eliminates the nitrogen and sulfur oxides. Best of all: The 10-year cost of operation is expected to be half that of natural-gas scrubbing.

Ford (along with the Detroit Edison power company) holds the patent to this something-for-better-than-nothing technology. Here’s hoping that licensing this good idea to the Toyotas and Hondas of the world might provide a well-deserved and long-overdue uptick on Ford’s bottom line.

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